Replying to Guild Wars Not The Average Mmorpg

While it's tempting to compare Guild Wars to any number of other fantasy-themed role-playing games, there's really never been anything quite like it before. It innovatively and successfully combines many of the best, most addictive properties of action RPGs, online RPGs, and competitive multiplayer games in one beautifully produced package, which offers a tremendous lasting value yet none of the monthly fees typically associated with online-only games. The first title from developer ArenaNet, Guild Wars threatens the entire online RPG establishment with its bold design. More importantly, it's a very impressive game that's rewarding on many different levels and can be tremendously appealing for any number of reasons.
In Guild Wars, you play as a hero from Ascalon, your typical fantasy province that's fallen on hard times, thanks to relentless assaults from fearsome creatures called the charr. Ascalon seems huge and wondrous as you begin to explore it and its outskirts. But it turns out to be literally just a tiny portion of the richly detailed and shockingly gigantic world of Tyria, which you'll explore during the course of an adventure that's truly epic. Meanwhile, the other half of the game consists of competitive battles between teams of players, set in various types of arena events. It's action packed, it's tactical, and it's sporting. It's definitely more involved than a pick-up-and-play first-person shooter, but it's relatively easy to learn and certainly difficult to master. Unlike many other online RPGs, which often take a lot of flak from their audiences for lacking a definitive endgame, Guild Wars gives the impression that it was built with the endgame competition as a primary concern. However, one of its big surprises is just how much noncompetitive content there is. Even if you have no interest in player-versus-player battling whatsoever, Guild Wars will still provide you with more than 100 hours of quality gameplay, which you can tackle either alone or together with other players pretty much every step of the way.

The core gameplay in Guild Wars is reminiscent of action RPGs like the Diablo series. It lets you navigate countless big, winding maps filled with enemies and treasure, and combat is frequent and fast. You can't climb or fall from ledges, so at times, the design of the maps feels pretty contrived. However, the generally linear layout mostly just helps to keep you focused. The game's interface is clean and intuitive, and offers a few neat perks like a minimap that you can scribble on to help you communicate with your team. You have free reign over the camera perspective, so you may choose to play from a first-person viewpoint all the way on out to a bird's-eye view. Although, a third-person behind-the-back angle seems to deliver the best of both worlds, because you'll get a close look at the game's gorgeous graphics and plenty of room to see on your character's periphery. When you see an enemy (whether it's a computer-controlled creature or an opposing player), you may target it with a hotkey or a mouse click, and then attack it with your ranged or melee weapons. Most of your combat will be focused on using your different skills, though.

You can have exactly eight skills readied at a time, which correspond to the number keys on your keyboard. Which eight skills you bring to battle and which skills you discover during your adventure is really at the heart of what makes Guild Wars such a compelling experience. It's what levels the playing field in PvP and keeps the action manageable even when things get really intense. Each of the game's six character classes has 150 unique skills, and each one has its own little icon graphic, description, and purpose. For the most part, skills are not inherently better or worse than other skills--they're just different. Depending on how you've developed your character or your role in a player team, the skills will be better or worse for your circumstances. Many skills have obvious uses, while many are much more specific to certain types of situations. Some will serve you better when exploring the role-playing portion of the game, while others will be better suited to PvP battling against real opponents. It's definitely an interesting selection process. It shares a lot in common with collectible card games, and similarly offers a very satisfying reward whenever you discover that great, new skill that makes you feel much stronger while also causing you to make significant changes to your overall strategy. Guild Wars' skill system is a resounding success.

Creating a character is a quick, straightforward process of choosing a gender, appearance, and character class. You'll quickly notice the game's striking character design right from this point. Even prior to that, though, you're asked to make an important choice: whether to build a standard role-playing character or a player-versus-player-specific character. If you choose the former, you start out as a first-level neophyte on a foreboding day in Ascalon's history. And if you choose the PvP option, you skip all the way through the 100-odd hours of questing and storyline and begin with a high-level character decked out with powerful equipment. He or she can then jump right into some competitive matches, but cannot participate in any cooperative gameplay. The idea behind these two options is pretty obvious. Players who'd rather not muck around with leveling up and pretentious fantasy storytelling needn't even bother with it, and they can instead jump straight into the competitive game. Or, players who want to get their feet wet before diving into PvP combat, or who want to ignore PvP entirely, may do so during the course of the adventure. It's not quite this cut and dried, though, because Guild Wars wants you to experience both aspects of the game, regardless of whether you think you do or not. Specifically, if you cut straight to the PvP, you'll find that the vast majority of the different character classes' skills are locked away, waiting to be discovered during the course of the role-playing portion. Custom weapon parts can also be found in the campaign, which can later be used in PvP.

So, it's possible that players expecting Guild Wars to be a light and breezy experience will be disappointed, because this is a deep, enthralling, and potentially very time-consuming game. While combat in Guild Wars rewards skillful planning and coordination between players, many of the best Guild Wars players will surely be the ones who invest the largest number of hours into the game--not only honing their talents, but also seeking out the best skills and equipment in the role-playing portion. Fortunately, the role-playing portion is on equal footing with the PvP, so chances are you'll enjoy the opportunity to experience both, and appreciate the game all the more for it.




The Good: Well-designed, interesting skill system and action-packed combat; tons of content--huge volume of cooperative and competitive activities; lavish presentation makes the whole world of the game look alive; technically marvelous--runs fast and smooth, loads almost instantly; has something for just about everyone.


The Bad: It can be difficult to find a good group of willing players for cooperative missions; the gameworld is beautiful, but lacks cohesion.

Well I am glad that you guys posted your opinions about this game, I was thinking of getting it but it sounds like it would only be really challenging if you had a team of friends challenging other teams. And since it is P-v-P it would probably get boring for me pretty quickly.

Well on September 7th they released the latest update to the game adding in 2 new explorable areas, lots of new quest, both in the new areas and through out the whole world. They have also done massive balancing to the characters and are about to do some sort of major sponsoured tournament. If you haven't checked out the game now would be a great time to do so, the graphics are great, the gameplay is great, and their are plunty of guilds out there that can help ya out and get ya into the GvG/PvP scene.

Hmm..guildwars is a great game nonetheless. but for a standard mmorpg, GW deviates from this and you can consider this game as a competitive online rpg~ It is a game where players engage in cooperative group combat in missions or in guild battles. Another good thing for this game was its visuals. The graphics were amazing. Having played in the World of Warcraft stress test, I find Guild War’s graphics to be better. The models seem to have a higher polygon count and even playing with the graphics quality set on low it was still beautiful. As for the content, the missions were pretty good making you want to play more and finish the storyline. People who’ve finished the missions had a lot to do since the guild versus guild was very fun and relies much on strategy.

Overall, Guild Wars is a great new game once you see past its being a non-MMORPG that a lot of people are used to. While this might not be the game for people wanting to play the standard MMORPG it nevertheless is an amazing game that can only get better in future patches

The game is slowly getting more features added to it and with the next big rollout that is supposed to happen sometime this summer, then the first expansion pack that is rumored to be released early to mid next year there are supposed to be more ways to individualize your character. Unlike other games I've played or heard of how many give out addons like the D2:LoD expansion for free. Thats whats happening this summer, NCSoft and Arena.net are rolling out 2 new areas to play with new quests, and they have already added new area's since the games launch. This will be the second major expansion of the game since its launch, they have already added 2 new area's to explore and many new quests.

i could see that getting pretty boring pretty fast, i prefer building up my character and cutomizing him, not everyone having the same person

Go get the game and look me up and we will see how things go.

I want to buy this game but probably when it goes down in price. I've always wanted to play MMORPG's but I never really wanted to pay monthly fees. So I guess this game would be perfect for me.

Ok, time for me to get fried, I know this is gonna happen but ok. The hole point of this game is that you don't have to do the "lvling grind" also to help eliminate PKing and lvl the battle feild in PvP so that the fighting is more skill based then, "I've got the biggest baddest sword, armor, ring, belt, ect..." and make it more about my team has practiced and works well and my guild has put in the time and knows how to work together.

As for side stuff, I'm sure it will eventually come, they release new quests and explorable areas on a semi-regular basis. This is a ever evolving game, with a ever evolving community. Give it time, this game may last a year and die, but I think it will be one of the first of its type and might even change the MMO forever.

We will just have to watch and see.

I'd really love to purchase this game but I don't want to pay the hefty price of $50. When I used to work at Wal-Mart we had it for $31.99 and I thought the normal price then was going to be $40 but, I was very wrong. I regret not buying it when we had it for $31.99.